Dungeon World Companion

Adventure Moves

Adventure moves deal directly with the adventure underway. They can move the action along, change the rewards, or transition from one adventure to another.

If you’re running a short game, maybe at a convention or game day, you may find that you want to front-load the experience a little more. Here’s a move that covers “the adventure so far” so that you can get straight into a short game in media res.

Stalwart Fighter: As if the bandits weren’t bad enough! As if all the sword wounds, bruises and beatings at the hands of your enemies were insufficient—now this. Trapped underground with your adventuring companions when all you wanted was to return to the town and spend your well-earned bounty. No such luck, warrior. Sharpen that sword! Certainly, the others will need your protecting before safety is found. Just like last time. Once more into the breach, right? I swear, one of these fellows must owe you a favor or two by now…

Have a look around and roll+CHA. On a 10+, choose two party members. On a 7–9, choose just one. On a 6-, you’re surrounded by ingrates.

At a moment of need, you can cash in a favor owed you by one of the party members chosen. They must change their action to one of your choosing, once. You may not give them an action that would involve them directly taking damage, giving up a magic item they already own or coming to immediate harm. Use it to make them agree with you, or give you that extra ration you want, or giving you their slot in the loot lottery. Leverage is sweet.

The most important part of this move is not the roll or the effect, but the information and tone. It sets the stage for a quick adventure and gives the player reading it a starting point to work with. The roll and result here are interesting, but don’t greatly change the flow of the game. Handing out a set of these, one to each player, along with a playbook, is a great way to run a con game.

You can also adapt the End of Session move to reflect the adventure you’re running. When doing this it’s key that you show the players the new End of Session move. The goal isn’t to keep them in the dark about what earns XP, but to make the XP awards tie directly to this adventure.

When you end the session, instead of using the normal end of session questions, use these:

Move Structure

Moves always follow a similar structure. The most basic parts of a move are the trigger (“when…”) and the effect (“then…”). Every move follows this basic format.

Triggers

Triggers are often fictional actions undertaken by the player characters but they can also be part of character creation or trigger at the beginning or end of a session. Note that a trigger never deals with precise units of time. Don’t write a move that begins “When you start a round adjacent to a dragon.” There’s no rounds (and adjacent is maybe not the best phrasing, as it sounds removed from the fiction of standing next to a damned fire-breathing dragon). Prepare Spells isn’t “When you spend one hour studying your spellbook” for good reason. Time in Dungeon World is a bit fluid, like in a movie where pacing depends on the circumstances. Don’t rely on concrete units either around the table (rounds) or in the fiction (seconds, minutes, days).

Here are some broad types of triggers:

Effect

Moves effects can be anything you can think of; they are as limitless as your ideas. Don’t feel constrained to making rolls, +1 bonuses, and swapping stats. Since all moves flow from the fiction, a fictional effect like “They treat you as a friend” is just as powerful and useful as +1 forward—maybe more so.

Here are some broad types of effects, any given move may use more than one of them: